Apocalyptic Rebirth: With a repairman system space, she rises again.-Chapter 667: Smooth take down.

Things were not as expected. The view from the drones had been deceptive. It had been a sanitized overhead map of movement and heat signatures. They had counted all those heat signatures and knew exactly how many people to expect.

But on the ground, the reality of the junkyard hit Hadrian and his squad with a jarring weight: the mercenaries weren’t alone. There were more people down there than expected.

​Scattered among the rusted skeletal remains of abandoned rusted ships and industrial waste were civilians—common people with hollow eyes and soot-stained clothes. They weren’t just scavenging; they were laboring. The squad watched as groups of them broke ground at fresh excavation sites, their rhythmic digging driven by the desperate hope of unearthing more Prime core stones for their overseers.

"Dig!" Shouted a superhuman to a group of civilians; from the looks of things, the superhumans were like managers forcing the ordinary people to dig the mines. These people did not even have the right mining gear, their hands were bloody and scarred. They were wearing torn or patched dirty clothes and shoes that were too ordinary for the task they were being forced to do.

The least their captors could have done was provide proper boots and gloves. It was a sad sight to see. A heartbreaking one.

"Please...." A man pleaded, "Can we at least take a short break? At this rate we are going to die from exhaustion!" He pointed at a pile of bodies, some moved slightly and others were still. "Do you want us all to end up like this? Even farmers give oxen a break to keep them active for many years."

The leader of the superhumans let out an evil laugh. "You talk too much, why don’t you join them then." He raised his gun and shot the man at the center of his face.

"Bulls eye." Another said.

They roared into laughter.

"Replace him." The superhuman ordered.

Hadrian exchanged furious looks with his teammates, he didn’t need to bark orders; his squad was a well-oiled machine. They worked in pairs, slipping behind the Walden sentries with the practiced ease of predators.

Snap! A guard’s neck went limp before he could even finish a yawn.

Thwip! A blade found the soft gap between a superhuman’s ribs, silencing his heartbeat before he could draw his weapon.

"Clear," a voice whispered over the encrypted short-range comms.

"Left flank dropped. Moving to the inner perimeter," another added.

They initial plan was to sedate them but after seeing their cruelty, sparing their lives was out of the question.

One by one, Mark’s men were slammed into the rusted metal of old cars, their throats sliced or their heads slammed against concrete. By the time the remaining superhumans and mercenaries realized that they were under attack, it was far too late. They had been surrounded.

The superhuman that shot the innocent man panicked. He was a hulking man with a Prime Core stone the size of a fist hanging from his neck. He stumbled back against a stack of tires. He let out a panicked roar, reaching for the stone and pressing it hard.

But nothing happened.

"Kill them! Burn them all!" he screamed, his fingers clutching the glowing blue stone. He braced himself, waiting for the familiar, intoxicating rush of fire to surge through his veins. He expected to turn the entire yard into a furnace. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Instead, nothing happened.

A flickering fire did come from his fingers. It pulsed once, a weak, pathetic spark of light, and then went dim.

"You should try again, maybe it could work." A voice told him.

His eyes went wide. He tried again, straining until the veins in his neck popped. "What... what is this? Work, you piece of junk! Work!"

Around him, his men were having the same panicked realization. One tried to phase through a wall and ended up just running face-first into the metal with a sickening crunch. Another tried to summon a shield of hardened air, only to be met with a pathetic puff of wind that wouldn’t have blown out a birthday candle.

"Something’s wrong!" a younger superhuman wailed, clawing at his throat. "The Core... it’s dead! My power is gone!"

Hadrian took off the blinding button. He looked remarkably bored, tossing a combat knife into the air and catching it by the hilt.

"Having a little technical difficulty, boys?" Hadrian asked, his voice dripping with mock sympathy. "It’s a real shame. Turns out, your fancy rocks are not as reliable as you imagined."

"You did this!" the large man spat, reaching for a sidearm since his superpowers had clocked out for the day.

Before his fingers could even touch the holster, an invisible force slammed his head into the tire stack. His neck was snapped in a heart beat.

The superhumans were terrified. For months, they had felt like gods, bolstered by the raw energy of the Prime Core. To have that power ripped away so suddenly was like being blinded in the middle of a forest fire. They felt small. They felt human. And looking at their friends dying, they realized being human was a death sentence.

"Please!" one begged, dropping his useless rifle. "We’re just doing what Walden told us! Some of us were forced to join his army! If we did not make them work, we would be the ones to work. You have seen what it is like down here. What would you do if you were in our shoes?"

"For start, I would not be cruel." Hadrian tilted his head, watching the young man tremble in fear, he did not have a pendant. "We will verify your story later." He shot a dart into his neck.

Others like him began to surrender.

When they stepped out, they found more sleeping superhumans, and one proud, but very bored looking dog. On her own, Hunter had taken out eighty-eight superhumans with ease.

They had not even seen her coming!

Hadrian tapped his earpiece. "Suni, the yard is secure. We are going to protect the Prime core until you get here."

The emotion in the yard shifted from predatory to pathetic. The Walden mercenaries that had surrendered, who had spent months terrorizing innocents with their abilities were piled together into a heap, unconscious.

"Tend to the wounded," Hadrian ordered his team, "The rest of you distribute evenly to guard this place well. Our mission does not end until Suni says so."